Screenwriting Thursday: Inverted Scene Order

Most storylines are comprised of a clear beginning, strong middle, and definitive end. But as long as this has been the standard, writers have been reworking it. The typical arch has been reworked to great effect by novelists, short story writers, playwrights, and now screenwriters. Film as an art form is a relatively new field, and the past decade has seen a large increase in screenplays written with scenes purposefully out of order, omitted, or told in reverse. Some screenwriters begin with a regular story arch and then shuffle it, but many dispense with the arch altogether.

Master of the psychological drama Christopher Nolan wrote the screenplay for a fantastic example of this shuffled story arch in Memento. The 2000 film was based on a short story written by his brother, Jonathan, about a man who cannot form new memories. Leonard Shelby, played by Guy Pearce, is searching for the man who murdered his wife. He must take Polaroids, jot down notes, and even tattoo himself in order to remember what he has learned the day prior. The audience witnesses his days out of order, and like Leonard, we don’t ever get the whole story.  This inverted scene order only increases the suspense of the film.

An Oscar for Best Original Screenplay was awarded to Michel Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind from 2004.  Like Memento, the film has reverse progression and inverted scenes.   But while Memento is a crime thriller, Eternal Sunshine is a quirky romantic comedy.  Protagonist Joel (played by Jim Carrey) falls in love with strange, moody Clementine (Kate Winslet), who has undergone a new memory treatment that will remove Joel from her memories.  It’s mind-bending in a very different way: there are plenty of fantastical elements, and the audience must figure out when the scenes come into the story arch by interpreting subtle clues (such as the hair color of Clementine).

But in the plots for both movies, the protagonist is searching for something he cannot find. The audience follows along on the crazy journey, made more surreal by the shuffled scenes, enthralled.  Memento and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind are two examples of screenplays that could never work if told with a traditional arch.  The intrigue, the thrill, and the fun of watching the movies would be lost.